In a Kearny Mesa industrial building, Stephen Shewmaker watches Cubic Corp. technicians tinker with the electronics for one of the company’s mass transit fare gates, trying to get it to open faster.

“Have you been to the London Underground at 7 a.m. and seen that queue grow?” said Shewmaker, president of Cubic’s Transportation Systems division. “If you have a time spread of 500 milliseconds, you would notice. You need to get people through faster.”

Technicians are shooting for 300 milliseconds from the time a rider pays his or her fare to when the gate opens, which is what it takes to keep lines moving in rush hour in a major city like London.

All around Shewmaker, workers are huddled over fare gates, scanners and ticket vending machines for transit systems from across the world. There’s a gate and smart card reader for the PATCO, which runs mass transit between Philadelphia and New Jersey. There’s one for Brisbane, Australia, another for Los Angeles and yet another for Atlanta.

It’s here that Cubic’s Transportation Systems performs research and development for its $386 million automated fare collection business, which makes up about one-third of Cubic revenue and half of its earnings.

Mass transit could become an increasingly important part of the company’s future. In the past 12 months, the division has won contracts for Sydney, Australia, and Vancouver, British Columbia, totaling more than $600 million. It also was awarded an upgrade to its London contract for $272 million.

“I think you’re seeing a big investment cycle in mass transit systems across the globe,” said Brian Gesuale, an analyst with Raymond James & Associates. “It’s starting to hit a bit of an inflection point where you’re going to see an acceleration from where growth has been.”

Cubic specializes in these soup-to-nuts, turnkey systems. Once it wins a contract, the term tends to run for 10 years or more. Since it began in the 1970s, Cubic Transportation has provided automated fare collection systems to more than 90 transit authorities worldwide.

By far Cubic’s largest system is in London, where it started providing smart cards in 1985. “We have 40 million cards issued, and we take care of 8.5 million transactions every day,” said Shewmaker.

Smart cards contain a chip that automatically deducts the fare when scanned at the gate. Users can reload the card with money online or through a call center.

At its Kearny Mesa facility, Cubic is working on the latest innovations in fare collection. Shewmaker, who wore cuff links made from old New York City subway tokens, said efforts are focused on open source payment — where transit riders pay by swiping a bank card. Cubic is also working on NFC — Near Field Communications — technology where riders could wave their smartphones in front of a scanner to purchase tickets.

Gesuale, the Raymond James analyst, said Cubic’s transportation business has a limited number of competitors, high barriers to entry and a recurring revenue stream. That, along with the Sydney and Vancouver contracts ramping up over the next few years, likely means the future is bright.

“I think you have a very long runway for growth in the transportation business both on the top line and the bottom line,” he said.